Check out Matt McKeon’s pie graph showing how the information on Facebook has gotten less and less private over the last five years: click here.

Unless you customize your privacy settings on Facebook, anyone can see them. Why does this matter? Is anyone looking? Don’t they just disappear into the internet ether?

1. It matters because it can affect your life. Facebooking while out sick has gotten people fired from jobs. A death threat on Facebook got a student expelled from school. Someone complained about their boss on Facebook and he saw it (warning, contains foul language.)

2. Yes, people other than your friends are or can be reading your status updates. In fact, there’s a whole website devoted to making people’s status updates searchable: youropenbook.org Even what seems like a harmless search for “Pittsburgh” turned up T.M.I. on someone’s brother’s arrest and someone’s personal update on their celibacy.